CalUKGR

:) This thread. Seems to be one long procession of 'hardcore' players determined to urge each on towards ever more ridiculous extremes in terms of making DayZ less and less accessible to new players, turning it into an unfriendly, selfish deathmatch. Contrast this to back in the heady days when this mod was still in 1.5.6 and had less than 40k players, considerably fewer servers and not a hint of cheating or hacking. Rocket, whilst it might be tempting to imagine threads like these should hold sway (people here shout so loud, after all) please remember how DayZ travelled and grew: it wasn't these fanatics, calling for you to turn 'their' mod into their own private fight club that made DayZ successful - it was ordinary gamers coming to it for themselves and, back then, finding something they could still play and enjoy and then spreading the word... DayZ is fast approaching a crossroads: hardcore marginal obscurity or wider mainstream popularity. You decide.

And as we all know alpha is the time in the development cycle where you need to avoid any and all suggestions. Instead you must look on with complete passivity until release' date=' where you are then required to immediately start complaining about the bad things that has carried over from alpha because noone called them out. [/quote'] Spot-on, fella. :) Even worse are those morons who post some one-liner to the effect that since 'Rocket has spoken on the subject, that is the end of the matter' and we should all obediently shut up and close the thread. Pfft. Alphas are exciting precisely because they are a time for the exchange of ideas and suggestions, for criticism and for play testing. If not now, when?

I don't see what is wrong with that - it's a valid argument to raise' date=' for many players. You have to use your imagination. 'Shamblers' can be highly intimidating in large groups. I and others have explained how we think slow-moving infected could be made twice as deadly, especially in numbers, without the need for comedic Benny Hill running about.

Private Military Company DLC is recommended. Higher-res player textures look great. You could also add in British Armed Forces. I have it, not sure if it's used.

Just further reflecting on the 'herd' thing with regard to the infected. Imagine how player groups lucky enough to own either a car or a helicopter could use them to draw large groups of infected away from targets - for instance those wonderful helo searchlights could have a 'moth to a flame' effect on them, leading them right out of built-up areas... Also, if Rocket and Co are lucky enough to get some talented 3D designers onboard, why not create some new high-value locations scattered around the world such as abandoned research facilities, etc, in which could be found some new, very rare items. Of course, infected numbers around these new locations would be intimidatingly high...requiring extensive planning and recon on the part of player teams prepared to take them on. They might even require several teams acting in tandem to get the job done... A classic risk/reward cooperative scenario.

I'd prefer more classic 'shamblers' with the proviso that if they notice you and get within a certain distance they'll close that final gap very fast. Also, in a thread now lost, someone mentioned having a 'hero' infected - one infected in every mid-large herd that notices you from a greater distance and somehow communicates this to the rest... It's an intriguing concept, not sure how it would fit, but might be worth considering. You'd sort of have to identify the 'hero' first to eliminate the possibility of a stampede...

Well said, fella. He doesn't speak for all of us. Sadly, that kind of bullying tone is all too common on these boards. Horr1d, you make a good and valid case for your argument and I can only echo your sentiments for the changes you'd like to see in DayZ. But I guess these are early days for the mod - and I'm as guilty as the next man for sometimes forgetting that. Perhaps that's what enthusiasm for a project such as this does. I still say: slow down the infected (but put a few random (and highly dangerous) 'runners' in there now and again just to catch us off-guard) and make all infected more dangerous if and when they come into player contact. I like the idea, also, of having the infected sometimes getting up again after being downed - adding another layer of player uncertainty in a stressful encounter. Introduce a proper 'herd' mentality to the infected so that player groups can use planned tactics to lure them away from high-value targets (hospitals, gas stations, etc) working as team, taking calculated risks. There is so much more that can be done with the infected as a creative device. I'm going to make myself confident Rocket and his team can see these possibilities already...

Then I'll say all this again, here: RE: dangerous infected people (Today 02:47 AM)BurstFire Wrote: In regards to the Zombie speeds. They shouldn't be sped up at all, their attack pattern is so odd, buggy and annoying, why should it be made even worse? If anything make them slower, harder to down and make their hits a bit stronger too. Maybe make them go down, then get up again after a bit, sometimes crawling, or have them slowly walk then eventually rush towards the player in some sort of bloodlust rage. ...Think I'm for both walkers and some runners, but having runners as 'special' would be neat. So they would be uncommon. This sounds like a perfect solution to me. I really do not like the current iteration of 'infected' (apparently, we are not to refer to them as Zeds for some strange reason). The scope for more tactical, thoughtful play is immediately widened by slowing down the infected, and making them that more dangerous. I love the idea that there could be, within any given group of infected, just one or two absolutely deadly 'runners'. And I also like the idea in the OP's post regarding sound, and how the infected should react to it without a line of sight. That just seems so much more believable than instantly all breaking into a silly zig-zag sprint-a-thon - again, this is something that really could work with tactical play (someone setting up a deliberate diversion to allow the main group of players to get into a hospital, say, unmolested as the infected move slowly away in the direction of distant gunfire...). Sadly, for all the potential there for creative gameplay I fear none of this will happen. Our Rocket overlord seems very set in his thinking and really quite dismissive of any suggestions that might leave his mod anything less than 'hardcore'. Still, DayZ will be noticed by other developers and they will read these forums and these suggestions too...

This. I tend to agree. I haven't been playing DayZ for over a week now. I didn't like what 1.5.7 did to zombie numbers and I'm even less enthused by the temperature mechanic. Just seems to me all Rocket has done is make what had been (in 1.5.6) a thoroughly enjoyable game now impossibly difficult - for no other reason than that he could. I appreciate there will always be a chorus of players prepared to back Rocket no matter what; they'll accept no criticism of their hero and they'll resist any attempt to (as they would see it) 'dumb-down' DayZ to make it more accessible' date=' more fun, for the rest of us. Still, I counsel against hubris on the part of Rocket - calling a sizeable section of your players 'carebears', as happened in the changelog notes for 1.5.8, simply because they voiced concern over the very high (in solo unmanageable) numbers of zombies in 1.5.7, was thoroughly uncalled for. In the end, Rocket can (I suppose) do whatever he likes with DayZ: it's his baby, after all. But he should be careful; he should absolutely listen to the [i']greater majority of his player base; those who might not make as much noise as the clamorous minority vocalising their insistence that the game remain unchanged, that it should remain hard just for the sake of being hard. Players like myself feel powerless to influence the mod as we see it drifting out of range; what was fun, is now a chore, hijacked by the 'hardcore' who want to keep it all for themselves, and it seems, increasingly, that the developer doesn't want to hear us. If he does hear us at all, he just wants to insult us, defended at all times by legions of uncritical fanboys. Hubris is a terrible thing. Ask any Roman Emperor.

Definitely. I think this is the power of DayZ: to make you re-evaluate what you thought it was you were looking for in a game and discovering that somehow DayZ answers that question within the first few minutes of playing... It's all the more amazing because, in essence, all Rocket has done is to take a VERY GOOD IDEA and graft it onto existing technology, effectively re-purposing a great game engine to do something it was never intended to do in such a way as to make absolute, perfect sense to almost all who stumble across it. For most of us, discovering DayZ for the first time is like some kind of gaming epiphany. This should not be underestimated. A game like DayZ connects with so many people (almost 100k 'unique players' and rising...) because it has managed that rare thing: to pare down the very core of a great idea - something we were almost all subconsciously wishing for - to its basic principles and pretty much leave it at that. 'Here's that thing you've been wishing for,' the game says, with a wicked chuckle and a glint in it's eye... If this was a 'guided', linear experience all the magic would quickly go away. We don't need to see lavish cut-scenes, pointless QTE's or any of triple-A gaming's current fads. DayZ is one of the year's biggest events in PC gaming without any of it. Turns out we just wanted, all this time, to be let loose in a huge, beautiful, frightening zombie-infested world - but crucially one anchored in some tangible sense of reality; a world we can recognise and one that most of us have at some point imagined for ourselves. Who knew?

Hmmm. DayZ so far has almost 90,000 'unique players'. My guess is that by the end of the weekend we'll see well over 100k unique players. The trend may well continue upwards for some time. The question is at what point do the numbers stack up in such a way that it just makes hard commercial sense to turn DayZ into a commercial entity? If the numbers keep rising over the next few weeks, there seems little doubt BI will want to turn this into a commercial proposition in some form - to essentially 'monetize' it, going forward. Perhaps the best way to do that might be 'trojan horse' it into the ArmA III product - the two could go hand-in-hand, after all. It's way too early to see if DayZ can make a strong enough commercial case for itself to become a 'stand-alone' product. At the moment it's proven it can sell its parent software (ArmA II), but 90,000 users is a mere drop in the ocean, financially speaking, when considering a completely new franchise.

From another thread in GD, where I posted this... How about three different starting load-out options the player could choose from? Each option has a default load-out consisting of: 1 x water bottle 2 x can of beans 3 x bandages 2 x morphine 1 x can of soda Option One 'The Marksman': All the default items, plus: A handgun and two x rounds of ammo Option Two 'The Navigator': All the default items, plus: A map and a GPS Option Three 'The Survivalist': All the default items, plus: A hunting knife and 1 x box of matches Players grouping together can then pre-assign agreed roles to team members before spawning into a new game and selecting their roles. This idea could be expanded to include, say a 'Medic' or a 'Mechanic' load-out...

How about three different starting load-out options the player could choose from? Each option has a default load-out consisting of: 1 x water bottle 2 x can of beans 3 x bandages 2 x morphine 1 x can of soda Option One 'The Marksman': All the default items, plus: A handgun and two x rounds of ammo Option Two 'The Navigator': All the default items, plus: A map and a GPS Option Three 'The Survivalist': All the default items, plus: A hunting knife and 1 x box of matches Players grouping together can then pre-assign agreed roles to team members before spawning into a new game and selecting their roles. This idea could be expanded to include, say a 'Medic' or a 'Mechanic' load-out...

And yet what does it profit a man to own all the guns he'll ever need, yet be too fearful to ever fire a single shot..?

...and if people feel it's too tough they will not bother playing at all. Sandboxes shouldn't 'be tough' just for the sake of it or because you feel they should be; they should offer a challenge' date=' with most level of players able to sense a reasonable expectation of success from the outset. Yeah, yeah, but what you're really saying is 'ima hardcorez mad skillz playa, innit and I know what ppl like' - okay, we get that. How about you stop and consider that perhaps the 'whining' you seem to hear might actually be legitimate criticism? I wonder what exclusive qualifications you posses for 'knowing what people like' in a mod like DayZ..? You can turn DayZ into an exclusive fight club for you and your no doubt equally 'skilled' friends, or Rocket can keep an eye on developing this mod for a much wider demographic, including people who don't consider themselves 'hardcore' but love the very concept behind DayZ and would like to participate meaningfully at their own particular level.

I like to play DayZ solo ('lone wolf') which was possible in the 1.5.6 build but is all but impossible in the 1.5.7 build (which Rocket has suggested has a problem with zombie spawning numbers and frequency, anyway). I would like DayZ to return to a more equitable balance of zombie numbers/spawns to ensure those who might still prefer to 'lone wolf' the game can at least try, but this entire notion of playing DayZ solo is also utterly dependent on re-looking at the game's blood system. If a player suffers long-term blood loss it is my understanding that only another player can provide a blood transfusion. This seems to me to be a fundamental (actually, a fatal) flaw in any notion of playing the game solo (as the Developer suggests it can be played on this very website) - since at some indeterminate point in play any player suffering blood loss will absolutely need to team up with another in order to have a blood transfusion carried out. If this is all correct, this needs fixing. There HAS to be a way found for solo players to enjoy the game without ever needing to interact directly with other players. Blood loss would appear to be a 'solo game killer' at the moment. Unless this is fixed, attempting to last it out as a 'lone wolf' who might be suffering slow blood loss is a wholly redundant guesture: the game will kill you, regardless.

I agree with you, but the last time I spoke out for a SP version Rocket himself stepped into the thread, insulted me and locked that thread. I acknowledge he did that because I posted a link to the SP version. Okay. Fair enough. I understand and appreciate Rocket's irritation; we don't know what he has planned for DayZ and it is without doubt his baby - he and his team did the hard work and they should, without reservation, be allowed to guide this project as they see fit. I reserve the right, however, to express an opinion on the worthiness of perhaps introducing an 'official' SP version of DayZ; something we now know is perfectly possible and actually works very well. I entirely respect Rocket's right to refuse any links to said SP version on these forums and I will never do that again. But none of this negates the validity of a SP version, nor indeed of the SP game that does already exist. It is, after all, just a mod of a mod. Please don't ban me for any of the above. It is just an opinion.